Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an agarase enzyme system purified from bacterial strain 2-40, which has a high level of activity for the depolymerization of complex polysaccharides, including agar and agarose. Further, the invention relates to methods of purifying, defining, characterizing and assaying the agarase enzyme system and the encoding gene(s). Finally, the invention relates to methods of using the purified agarase enzyme system.